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Lamont Weekly Report, June 12, 2009

As you all are probably aware, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding (ARRA, aka stimulus funding) comes with significant reporting requirements. We are starting to see Stimulus awards come in and we do expect that many more PIs will be receiving such funds in the coming months. Therefore, we have invited Paul Reedy, who is
leading Columbia's ARRA implementation team, to come to Lamont to talk about PI responsibilities with respect to Stimulus Funding. The government reporting requirements for ARRA are significant so this will be a very important meeting for everyone. Please join us: Tuesday June 16th 10am Lamont Hall.

The high point of this past week was another successful Advisory Board meeting - well attended and very lively with much good discussion about carbon sequestration following excellent presentations from Peter Kelemen and Dave Goldberg. We held the meeting in the new headquarters of CU Alumni and Development (ex-UDAR) down on 113th Street (between Riverside and Broadway) - there is a new very plush facility for CU alumni on the ground floor with some meeting and
entertainment facilities.

On Thursday morning we hosted a very brief visit to the Campus by Frank Murray - the head of NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) - he very much admired our Comer Building and said very good words about the importance of university based research as a way to tackle NYS problems in energy and the environment. (However, I do not think this can happen until the State legislature learns how to behave at a level above kindergarten). We are working on two big multimillion dollar proposals for building renovations that we hope to submit to the new federal stimulus funding opportunities that have been recently announced by NIH, NSF and NIST. These will be very tough competitions - both internally and externally - but given our current budget situation it is critical that we
succeed with at least one - it will be the only way that we can expend significant effort in improving our building facilities for the next several years.

Sadly I have a 330pm meeting in the Low Library this afternoon, so that means no TGIF and a very slow drive home this evening. But at least it might stop raining tomorrow...

And last but by no means least: we have all kinds of traffic on campus and at this time of year that includes turtles - they are especially vulnerable while migrating across our roads. Please drive carefully, keep your eyes open, and give them a "brake".